The Game Changers: reveals why ‘punching like a vegetarian’ is the highest praise

I’ve always believed that films can transform lives. But I’m not sure it’s ever happened to me – until last night. Or at least not in quite such a radical way. 

I went to the premiere of The Game Changers and I think it may change my life. 

James Wilks, who was once crowned ‘the Ultimate Fighter’ now trains the US military in serious hardcore defence techniques. But when he was injured a few years ago he was desperate to make a speedy recovery. He started investigating what he should be eating and discovered that the original gladiators were vegans. 

He was shocked because he’d believed the age old mantra about eating more meat = getting more protein = becoming stronger. 

So he decided to look into the science behind it and see if there was something in it that could help him. 

He turned his search into this film and it’s fascinating, shocking stuff with staggering statistics which show that eating plants is better for you – and particularly helpful if you’re an athlete or do a lot of sports. 

In various tests he showed that power, endurance and recovery were all boosted when on a plant based diet.  

And all sorts of bad things were reduced – like cholesterol and blood pressure – with the knock-on presumed reduction in heart attacks and other horrid things. 

What was interesting was that you’d think vegan athletes would all be skinny beanpoles. But it wasn’t like that at all. 

Okay – there was   super endurance runner like Scott Jurek who is a total beanpole. 

But the others were lean but seriously powerful like Dotscie Bausch (eight time US cycling champion) or women’s world pro surfer Tia Blanco. And there were plenty of beefy dudes too – Bryant Jennings (heavyweight boxing title contender), the colossal ox Patrik Baboumian (world record-holding strongman), and Nimai Delgado (professional bodybuilder) all turning to plants to get stronger and healthier. 

And the film, which is directed by Louie Psihoyos, has some big big names behind it as its executive producers including James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Novak Djokovic, and Chris Paul.

And Schwarzenegger – who famously said, as an insult, “you hit like a vegetarian” – is now 99% vegan! What a turnaround.

It also talks about Bruce Lee’s ‘truth in combat philosophy’ – which is brilliant: “Research your own experience, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.”

The documentary finds that going plant based has massive advantages including increasing blood flow, making muscles more efficient, and speeding recovering by lowering inflammation. 

And I don’t think all this is just about optimising things for athletes – surely we all want to be better at whatever it is we do – and more importantly feel better and have more energy every day so we can do more of what we like doing – and being more productive. 

There are some interesting suggestions in the film which are alarming. Dr David Katz, the Founding Director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Centre, hints that encouraging us to eat meat and dairy is propping up companies who create this and then supporting the pharmaceuticals who treat the issues. 

He boldly says in the film: “The formula works beautifully for people selling food. It works beautifully for people selling drugs to treat the diseases that bad food causes. And it works beautifully for the media, which can give us a new story about diet every day.”

James Cameron talks candidly about why he has switched to plants and he says that if we considered our diet more like a business then we would cut out the middle man as it maximises our profits. He suggests that animals are just the ‘middle men’ and reduce the nutritional benefits we’d get if we went straight to the plants. 

I was utterly convinced by what I saw. 

I’m not a big meat-eater but I’m totally cutting that out – and I’m going to do my best to cut out dairy too. I’d like to go extreme but I think it will be tricky so I’m going to just try cutting right back. 

So far so good. This morning I woke up, went running and I’ve stocked up on coconut milk – which is absolutely fine in porridge – and even possibly quite nice! 

But the main excitement so far is that I’ve discovered that some mainstream dark chocolate is totally vegan – result. 

So I’m going to give this plant-based shnizzle a whirl and see what happens. 

To find out more about the science behind the film check out the website – it’s super interesting https://gamechangersmovie.com/

As a little postscript to this film review: 

• I reckon plant-eaters might also be more friendly people than carnivores…because people who watched this film actually chatted about it afterwards (the guy next to me ate three bananas as well!). He was certainly embracing it!
• But what was bizarre was that there was an advert, in fact there were two adverts, for McDonald’s before the film started – I don’t think McDonald’s marketing team did its market research very well on this occasion!